2013.08.19 - Retaming the zoo
The Bronx The northernmost borough is an eclectic mixing bowl of society. Jewels such as Hart Island, Yankee Stadium, the Zoo, and the Botanical Gardens are mixed in with some of New York's poorest neighborhoods. Recent attempts to revitalize the neighborhood have gone well, and there is optimism that the Bronx is in revival. East coast rap was born here and the Bronx is an epicenter for that type of music. Rain (25m) Spider-Woman (16m) Sue Storm (20s) David (0s) ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ For a couple of days now, the zoo has been sealed up and locked up tight. What is most curious is those who could see into the zoo can actually see the animals roaming the pathways, just milling about. When those would try to investigate closer, the cages seem to have the people in them, and those with proper training can possibly identify primitive booby traps in place to keep people out. Infact the only human who was even out of the cages was one by a bunch of tigers, feeding them slabs of meat each. He was even petting them and scratching them and they seemed to enjoy the attention, purring can even be heard for those who can get close enough to hear. Sue Storm has been here for several minutes watching from overhead, her force field making her both invisible and able to remain above the average person's lline of sight as well as out of the scent-range of the smarter critters like those tigers. She hopes. She'd heard something strange was going on, but this seems REALLY weird. She drifts a bit closer, really wishing her blue and black costume had a way for her to carry her cell phone, or at least a camera of some sort. She has no idea who this man feeding the tigers is, and just knows that the computer system back in the Baxter would have already answered. Weird stuff is pretty much a fact of life in New York. This is still pretty out there though, and Spider-Woman has only heard of it threw the recent issue of the Planet. As such, she is making her way towards the Zoo by web. Once she gets close enough, she starts making her way along the rooftops, using her Ninja training and her Spider-Sense to keep hidden and out of sight, scent and hearing, thanks to her abilities as both ninja and spider-powered super hero. She's curious as to what's going on, and something tells her whatever is going on here, it will get stranger before it gets better. Rain likes the zoo. Or rather, she normally likes the zoo. So having it shut abruptly is definitely a rather alarming thing. She's got her bandana, goggles and long coat on (And the hat), though Richard isn't anywhere near. She's left her own friends at home, it seems. Not that a duck is much of a battle pet. She's up above, much like Sue. Her dark purple eyes widen a bit, seeing - are those people in the cages? Rain adores critters, but this seems... off. Definitely disconcerting. She pulls her rather beat up looking smart phone and points the camera at it. Yeah, she doesn't believe it either. But at least used smart phones are cheap. wait. Who is that guy feeding tigers? "Come on you Mutie freak, let us out!" One of the men yells and throws a rock towards David. Even though the man missed, one of the tigers leaped up and lunged at the cage as if intent on ripping the man apart. The bars are the only thing which keeps the man safe because he staggers back enough to barely avoid the tiger. "Easy...Soon we will no longer bother with them." David calls out calmly to the tiger and it seems to glare at the man in the cage, pacing it now. So far everything seems to be fine, except a pigeon lands infront of Rain, turning and cocking it's head at her. As soon as it seems to have found her, he looks in that direction. Sue Storm gasps faintly as the tiger snarls at the man in the enclosure, and even though the captive backed off quickly and the tiger didn't press the issue a very brief and faint shimmer of pale blue appears between them but then disappears again. When she notices the man's attention turn upwards, also turns to see Rain there, with a pigeon tilting its head and regarding her. Wait. She looks down at the man not in an enclosure then back up at the pigeon. Oh boy. She's got to move quickly and quietly. Dropping down to hover just behind the caged man that had spoken up, she extends her force field so that he becomes invisible as well before speaking in a near whisper. "Shh, don't yell. I'm Sue Storm, and I'm going to get you out of here." Watching the goings on once she's close enough to watch without being detected, Spider-Woman waits and tries to assess the situation. The people are in the cages, save for one, and the animals are on the outside. Definitely not the kind of thing normally seen in a zoo. This guy also sounds like he's pretty nuts. But the racist slur is a curious note. There's no way to be sure if this man is a mutant, metahuman, or something else entirely. For the moment, what she does know is he's clearly a threat to the people in those cages. That in mind, she starts making her way silently across the rooftops, continuing to work on not being detected while she tries to come up with a plan to help the prisoners. She does notice the pigeon and Rain, though she's not aware of who is under the costume, and hopes that this won't get too crazy. There are innocent lives that could be caught in the crossfire, after all. Well. On the bright side, only Gotham pigeons carry switch blades. But still. It just /had/ to be a pigeon. She stares at it. The Mexican standoff music begins. She stares evenly at the pigeon, squinting. "... hi." Yes, she's talking to it. Warily. She pauses a second. "Could you um, take me to your leader? Do pigeons have leaders? I always thought Pesto was maybe like, head pigeon if you were in the mafia. And NO DOUBT you have a mafia because you're a pigeon," And pigeons are evil. She looks to the bird and then down, hearing tigers growl a little. She seems - very, very concerned. "Seems we have a guest." David says as he reaches to get a side arm from a holster. "Looks like you guys will have food yet. Stay and gua-" He says as he looks to the cage where the man was. He raises his side arm and opens fire at the spot where the man. "Oh thank god, please help us, we been trapped here for-" BLAM BLAM BLAM as bullets fly for them. "It is not nice to sneak up on people. Either reveal yourself or I detonate the bombs hidden in those cages." He calls out coldly, with no empathy to his voice regarding the damage the bombs will do. "If you even think of detonating those bombs, I can guarantee you and your pets won't like the consequences." A voice says, hidden somewhere up above. Her spider-sense is blaring now that she's near the cages, able to sense the danger they present. Spider-Woman tend towards jocularity at times, ironically echoing her male counterpart without knowing it. But she has a distinct hatred of stunts like this. "You have two choices. Surrender and you'll be treated as fairly as possible under the law. Or be an idiot, and watch me rip apart every animal you have under your command." The threat is a low blow and she knows it. But she also knows this guy seems to love these animals. She normally frowns on animal cruelty herself, but this time she has to make an exception, if lives are to be saved. She remains out of sight though. "You have ten seconds to decide whether your animals live or die." Sue Storm startles as the man outside the cages abruptly fires a gun, and she pulls herself and the captive man sideways out of the path of the bullets and behind a stand of plants in the enclosure. "Look," she says to the man quietly and urgently, "act like you were just hiding or something. I promise I'll still be here, and I'll try to find the bombs he's talking about. Go, before he figures it out." She stays invisible, but releases the man from from her force field so he's visible again. "I promise you'll be okay," she whispers to the man. That captor out there is DANGEROUS. God she wishes Reed were here. He would ... wait, the guy can't detonate ALL the bombs by himself, not unless he's using something like a wireless signal. Well. She tried reasoning with the pigeon. And Rain tries not to kill things! She befriended a Leviathan, a giant crab and - okay, well. So reasoning with the pigeon is going nowhere. Rain likes critters. She eyes the pigeon. "... I'll be back." She's watchin' you, minion of Pesto. She jerks, startled by the shots and screaming. Gah! She winces. She decides to come in a a bit closer. Man, how - she doesn't want to tamp down Spider-Woman's rage train, but - then... oh wait. There's steak here. A portal to the catnip dimension! And a laser pointer. But first, let's distract those predators. She'll try to land behind some trees to start casting. It will take her several minutes, but she's gonna summon up a big ole pile of kitty weed. And she has a laser pointer in her pocket. For now, it's summoning quietly time. The catnip won't be around for several minutes. There was something which seemed like a bomb however once it was investigated something goes off and the bomb explodes in a bright flash of light and explosion of sound. A flash bang bomb! The tigers snarl as they try to find the voice and even begin trying to leap up to get up high enough to find it. No luck. However the pigeons seem to be now going after spider-woman now, and infact birds of all sorts seem to be flying towards where she is. Sue Storm startles when the flashbang goes off, a force field again snapping around the man whose enclosure she's in to protect him. Then, as hastily as she can she's floating up and over the enclosure where she can see David, and there's a force field around him. This is one of her 'serious' ones, so close to full power it's nearly opaque. It's definitely blocking out sound at the least, almost all light, and it could possibly also be blocking out air. Her spider-sense flaring, Spider-Woman turns, as the pigeons start to attack. "Sorry, never was a fan of the Birds." she says, and raises her hands, and launching thick, heavy webbing from all ten fingers at anything and everything coming her way. She's hoping to do so non-lethally, for now, as she just wants the birds out of the way. But she will kill them if she has to. She bobs and weaves about up on the roofs as she does, making sure to never present a stationary target for the feathered foes with the fabulous fury of feared feet. Oh boy. Someone's re-enacting a Hitchcock film. Rain has to hustle. And indeed, she has a couple of large bags of catnip. It's cat wreckin' time. Kitties gonna be more baked than a batch of cupcakes. She hops back onto her broom, shaking the burlap bags. She hangs onto one, and decides to disperse it a little above the tigers. "Kitty party!" She's trying to be non-lethal about it. Though, she also has to worry because Rain is in fact, made of meat. Tigers like meat. And deep inside, she carries an ancestral fear from the days large animal predators were a real danger to humans and their ancestors. Wasn't so long ago geologically speaking that cats once carried primates off. They still do. For now, it's time to play Shake 'n Bake. Shaking the bags, she's dispersing catnip! Party to the kitties! The minute the forcefield comes up and encloses David, the strangest thing happens. Every animal in the zoo except for people begin charging to the forcefield trying to break it. The big cats tried to bite and claw it but with the catnip being presented it was a little difficult, still they tried. However, they werent the only animals. Apes were coming in, throwing things at the forcefields, giraffes and polar bears came to ram against the thing and even a crocodile tried to bite onto the energy barrier. Still, when Spider woman's webbing hit the birds, it seemed David tried to fight some invisible force for a brief second. With the birds handled, Spidey turns to the sudden influx of animals throwing themselves at....the guy with the bombs? No, at something almost visible surrounding him. It doesn't take much to figure out that a member of the Fantastic Four is present, nor does it take a genius to know which one. She begins trying to web the animals to teh ground, keep them immobilized but otherwise unharmed, much like with the birds. Well, aside from ending up with some non-leathal crash landings due to being webbed up, at least. Sue Storm watches the man's reactions inside the force field, not really understanding as she didn't see Spider-Woman right off. Instead, she was about to call for someone to try to help corral the animals, but Spider-Woman is fast and on her toes. Maybe literally, too. Becoming visible, she uses another couple of force fields to corral some of the smarter/trickier animals long enough for the red-clad woman to immobilize them with the webbing stuff and calls out as she does so, "Thanks. How long will that stuff hold up?" She's wondering how in the heck they're going to get all of the animals back in their habitats, especially as she can't maintain force fields like this indefinitely. She's still looking toward David frequently still to make sure he's not doing something untoward. And maybe also to release the force field the moment he's passed out from lack of oxygen. Well, the catnip just might take more time. For now then, Rain tries to - get plan B going. She pauses. Laser pointer time! Thinking quickly, she carefully shines the laser beam on the ground near some of the animals. Maybe she can get a few of them to come back this way. "Here kitties, kitties, kitties. Wait, is this stereotypical?" Because... witches and cats. There's some relief, as some of the trickier animals are domed. Maybe Rain should stick to rounding up whomever responds to the laser pointers or something smaller. They seemed intent on trying to break David out but for each bird which hits the ground looks like David is punched and he pants and gasps as he tries to maintain consciousness. He looks up to the animals close by and a strategy comes to mind but he shakes his head. He tries to raise the gun up to fire it straight up, and with the last of his strength, BLAM! as he falls down. "The stuff usually dissolves after about a week at full strength." Spidey replies. "I'm trying to restrain myself so that it'll last long enough to get them back where they need to be without hurting them if I can. But if it's down to them or the people that maniac's trapped in the enclosures, I'm willing to carry through on my earlier threat." She calls back. When David goes down, she becomes very alert, paying close attention to her spider-sense as well as his body language, trying to determine whether or not he's playing possum. It wouldn't be the first time someone had tried that. If he is genuinely out, her spider-sense will reduce in strength, but if not, it'll continue to warn her that he's still a threat. "I think he's out. But still, get ready to give him the same treatment as soon as I drop the field. Ready?" Sue rubs at her forehead for a second before gesturing toward the man. A second, more transparent open-top cylindrical field appears around the one encasing David, and then the nearly opaque field disappears. "Ready and willing." Spidey calls back. Her Spider-Sense isn't reacting as much. But as soon as she has a clear shot, she goes about webbing down every part of David except his head, as she doesn't want to risk him suffocating. Here kitties, kitties. Rain's trying to catch some of the slower animals who might get eaten. Since noone of them seemed to respond to the laser pointer and likely many of the feline persuasion are probably baked or getting there. Aw yissss, catnip. Actually, Rain ends up walking a penguin, hand in flipper back to his pool. David is knocked out and webbed, the animals dont want to leave him but if the others dont do anything hurtful to the man they seem to somewhat comply. Sue Storm settles to the ground next to the man for a moment, gently making sure he's not got an arm torqued or anything, then divesting him of the gun and anything else he might have that's of interest, like, you know, a bomb detonator. Then she looks at Spider-Woman, since Rain is quite busy wrangling animals, "Do you know how to disarm those bombs he mentioned? I don't want to put the animals back if those are still in place. I am going to start getting all of the people out, though." She stands and turns to go back to the man she'd started trying to rescue, getting him free first and asking where a safe, animal-free area would be for her to make the main relocation point. "Oh, and do you have a way to contact the police? I, um, don't really have any pockets in this outfit so I had to leave my cellphone at home." "I'm no demolitions expert, I'm afraid." Spider-Woman says, as she makes her way down towards Sue. "There should be a pay phone around here though that we can use. or an office phone at least. That can get us in contact with the police and the bomb squad." Too bad for them, the whack job doesn't seem to have a cell phone. Category:Log